2007+July+11

Lisa Dobbs Logger Notes July 11, 2007

The moment of free writing suddenly disappeared as the clock chimed 9:00—time for class to begin. Steve offered our vocabulary word of the day that was passed down by a previous scholar. We were able to take part in Plato, notice I did not say playdoh as that is for another day. Steve shared that this is what we were doing during Wendy’s writing prompt. Wow! The word is **ekphrasis**: which is the way a person creates art from another piece of art. I was excited that I actually spelled the word correctly before Steve spelled it for us but the spell check insists the word was supposed to be emphases. NOT!

Teralyn presented our photo stories that some of us completed in an hour but then again who was counting. We were so involved with our creation that time did not seem to matter but completion did. The stories were wonderful and it will be a spectacular tool for us to use in the classroom. Questions were fired at Teralyn and she was patiently providing answers. She also added that she uses this as teasers for anticipation guides.

We have now entered the technology zone where only younger generations have seemed to encounter masterfully. web logs or online diaries out there such as facebook, blogger, epals, myspace, gaggle but Teralyn prefers CLASS BLOG MEISTER The site is [|www.classblogmeister.com] The nice part of this program as the administrator of the blog has to approve entries as well as responses before they can be posted for others to view. The administrator has the joy of reading what is in before it goes out. We continued learning how to log on to blogging, clicking publish and Save, and that we have the option to delete even after our posting was published. She continued to award us more power by showing us how she set up her classes.

Research: Annotated Bibliography: Jeff reminded us that we need to have 4 cites that is something practical, works in our classroom, and something we are curious about.

Jeff shared with us how to use the WSU site as a search engine for research. [|www.wichita.edu]. Forgive me as all the neat research avenues encompassed me, that I noticed I forgot I was the logger, and not taking notes. The two research sites that he recommends is JSTOR and PROJECT MUSE.

Writing Prompt:

Wendy prefaced her writing prompt by assuring that this was a guaranteed tear jerking experience. She shared a story of a man throwing all the starfish along the beach into the water and when questioned of the infinite miles of beach, the man replies that he can at least save that one. We were to write about a student we made a difference or claimed to have saved. Needless to say, we can certainly say that there are 11 fortunate students out there hopefully passing on the rescue efforts. I just have to say the box of Kleenex earned its keeps. Wow what powerful stories. Oh did I mention that Wendy was concerned about the Fire Marshall showing up as we were making provisions for all the laptops and guess who happened to appear. Whew! That was a close one.

Author’s Chair: Renee read out of book about a boy and his memory of his dog. The book entitled, “Never Have Your Dog Stuffed” was comical and yet sad as the boy lost his only childhood companion. You see, this young boy that we come find later was Alan Alda who was struck with polio during the 2nd grade. Most kids did not come around because of the unknown disease and therefore he depended on Rhapsody’s company. The dog suddenly dies and dealing with the removal of the dog’s body the father quickly states that they will stuff the dog and the story continues of the affect of this decision. This was a nice humorous segue from our previous emotional path.

Teacher Demo: Emily presented how to write Document Based Essays. We participated in the activity and continued by sharing how we could apply this to our own classrooms. I was so actively enhanced with our assignment that again I realized I was not taking very many notes. Internet Recess: Excited about our number one activity of the day, we then anxiously wondered over to the computers and practice getting on blogging and had recess where were able to play with the internet. We were all so engaged that we did not realize the time was to go home.